When I was in primary school, we had Language Days where we were only allowed to speak one language on assigned days. The school’s main goal was to encourage the students to use each language more often. Since I was in a Madrasah*, we were taught using three languages: English, Malay, and Arabic. On Language Days, speaking the wrong language would cost us fifty cents—that could afford me a plate of rice back then! On days where the language was English or Malay, talking went on as usual, since these are the languages we speak at home the most, and feel most comfortable talking in. But on Speak in Arabic days, the school was suspiciously quiet… It’s really ironic because instead of encouraging us to speak in Arabic, we chose the easier way – by not speaking at all! It gets even funnier when we do try to say something but don’t know the word in Arabic, so we make an English/Malay word sound Arabic. If I could not remember the word for ‘library’ in Arabic, I’d just say ‘li-bi-ra-ri’ which fairly sounds Arabic (although I would still get charged fifty cents).
Looking back on those days, I should’ve made more of an effort to speak in a language that I don’t usually use. Maybe I would’ve been a better speaker at Arabic! Did you have Language Days in school too?
*A Madrasah is an Islamic school where besides having secular subjects such as English, Maths, and Science, we also have religious studies! We used to study those subjects in Arabic, but kids nowadays learn them in English and/or Malay.
This post was written by our lab member Shaza (the one in the middle!) After the snapshot series we had of our team, we also wanted to share some stories of when we were children—when our language (and perception of the world) was still very much developing in all the funny, different, and interesting ways.